passive programming

It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted about teen services. I took a brief sabbatical from the realm of public libraries to work for a vendor, but now I’m back where I belong! To kick off my new-ish job, I’ve been tasked with running our teen booth at the local book festival. The festival happens to coincide with Teen Read Week, so we’re using Get Away @ Your Library as the theme. For activities, we are going to play Pin the Glasses on John Green (thanks to Sarah Amazing!) and I’ve created the matching game below.

Feel free to use this game at your own library. You can download it as a PDF here.

The branches of my library system always have some excellent programming. They are constantly impressing me with the creative stuff their staff plans. This year, the Fairview Public Library is hosting a Secret Santa Reading Challenge. They wrapped books up like presents and put them under their Christmas tree. Patrons check out the wrapped book, take it home, unwrap it, and read it. Once they’ve read their Secret Santa book, they can fill out a review slip to be entered in a drawing for a Visa gift card.

I think this is an awesome spin on the whole “Blind Date with a Book” trend that’s going on right now. It’s also a great way to implement passive programming at your library. Even if your library can’t afford to raffle off a prize, patrons will still be curious about what book they might get.

For Teen Read Week, I’m doing a Take It and Make It Edible Book Craft. Teens will sign out a kit (pictured to the left) that contains everything they need to make edible books at home. This activity will take the place of our monthly crafternoon meeting. I adapted the idea from something I saw on the Teen Read Week website. The project cost around $15 for about 25 kits.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that we get a lot of participation in Teen Read Week, the branches are collaborating on many activities and I really want to see some system solidarity success. A reporter from the local paper was here and I’ve been pushing some (but not too much) on our social media sites. We’ll just have to wait and see.